Review
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Title: Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes Along the Mormon Trail
Author: Laura Allred Hurtado and Bryon C. Andersen, with John Burton, Josh Clare, and Bryan Mark Taylor
Publisher: The Church Historian’s Press
Genre: Art
Year Published: 2016
Number of Pages: 143
Binding: Paperback
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-0-692-78585-0
Price: $24.95
Reviewed by Sarah Moore for the Association for Mormon Letters
Far from being yet another coffee table book, Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes Along the Mormon Trail provides a fresh look at the Mormon Trail by combining the work of modern-day artists and the words of Mormon pioneers. The book features the work of three landscape artists, John Burton, Josh Clare, and Bryan Mark Taylor, all three of whose paintings were on exhibition at the Church History Museum for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in late 2016. Church Museum Curator Laura Allred Hurtado and Church Historian Bryon C. Andersen add to the already beautiful artwork with excerpts from pioneer journals, evoking the pioneers’—and the artists’—journey along the trail.
Representing years of work, this book aims to create for the reader an intimate look at the trail through artwork created largely *en plein air*. Significantly, each of the contributors is aware that they are, in their own way, creating their own truth, and that the act of painting and compilation itself is not only a representation of the pioneers’ story along the Mormon Trail, but their own story as well.
The book is put together remarkably well. Burton, Clare, and Taylor each have a unique artistic style that complements each others’ work, and the rotation between the three artists prevents the book from becoming stale. A few notable locations, such as the Sweetwater River and, of course, Devil’s Gate itself, are depicted more than once, allowing the viewer to experience the scene from more than one set of eyes. The reprints themselves are well done, with vibrant colors and enough detail to be able to appreciate the thick texture that is such a hallmark of oil paintings, such as in Clare’s “Light of Life,” a stunning example of mountains made seemingly out of brushstrokes.
Accompanying each painting is a small infographic indicating the location’s position on the trail, a thoughtful addition which adds to the reader’s own experience of journeying along the trail. Also accompanying each painting are excerpts from Mormon pioneer journals as well as the occasional aside from the artist, or perhaps the curator and historian. These make a welcome addition, connecting the art to the pioneers’ experience while also situating it in a modern-day narrative.
Of particular interest to me is the framing of the book between the Hurtado and Andersen’s essays in the front and the artist interviews in the back. The placement of the artwork between these various perspectives—curator, historian, and artist—serve as a reminder of the narrative being created here between past and present, between the pioneers’ own lived experience and our modern-day perception of it.
Nowhere is this more clearly seen perhaps than in Clare’s “Temple Hill,” which depicts the location of what was Winter Quarters complete with the buildings, roads and telephone lines present today. Hurtado remarks that this “points out the construct implicit in the paintings themselves,” which are “idealized depictions cropped to maintain the view of the land as intact, the trail still accessible” (42).
Overall I found this to be a thoughtful and well-done presentation of the Church Museum’s Saints at Devil’s Gate exhibition. While it does not, perhaps, significantly add to the historical dialogue surrounding the Mormon Trail, it does offer an intimate view of the trail by three artist who have experienced it themselves.